Crusader Kings

A fantastic board game, its the best Grand Strategy Board game I've played. Premise: The game allows you to simulate a medieval King and his kingdom, with scenarios such as crusading in the 11th century. The decisions your king is allowed to make is marry queen's, create duchies, start wars,and overthrow territories. It is based on the Video game series with the same name. Though I cannot tell if the game stays true to the video game because I haven't played it, I can tell you it does remind me of Total War Medieval 2. Gameplay: fun gameplay, a good balance between simple enough to understand and complex decisions to make for the player. In the game you do certain actions by playing cards, with successes being determined on the Virtues and Vices of your dynasty. The goal of the game is to conquer territories, crusade and develop your Kingdom. Conquering territories is, I would say the best part of the game with the player being faced with dilemmas and paranoia, combined with the satisfaction of building an empire while defeating your opponents. Would say that the player needs to do some forward planning to fully coordinate the actions of the King and not end up with a broken kingdom. Complaints about the gameplay is that the cards are sometimes too luck based. Sometimes, no matter how cunning of a plan you can come up with, if your Cards are terrible, it will be hard to achieve your goals. Most of the cards trigger events bad for the player. With players receiving these cards, instead of being able to build your empire by building tall or wide you are putting out fires that the cards started. Further as a result of the simplistic design, there is no religion mechanic. Historical Accuracy: the game sacrifices Hostorical Accuracy for gameplay. While this does make for a balanced game, if you are into History ypu might be angered at the fact that by the 11th century Portugal is formed and the Spanish have taken back most of Iberia as well as a united Italy. Factions: this game is for up to 5 players, with rules for solo play, however solo play rules make for a lengthy game. The game is missing some playable factions such as the Byzantines, the Moors, and the Holy Roman Empire has been removed from existence. Time: 30mins set up time, 3 hours game. Double that for solo play. Rules: I wish this had a playthrough guide because you will have to read the rules a couple of time, and keep referring back to it multiple times in the first few games. Map: the map is a massively oversimplified Europe with there being a tiny 34 provinces to conquer, add on top of that the fact that 1 empire is only allowed to have up to 8 provinces. The crusade mechanic is not on the map but instead a list of cities that a crusade occurred in. In short, this game is the one of the best, if not the best grand Strategy game out there judging solely on gameplay.